Roger's Last Oscars

Roger loved the Academy Awards. He never sat inside the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the Kodak Theater to watch the show. Instead, he
preferred to cover it as a journalist, standing outside on the red carpet to
interview people as they entered the theater. He said he never wanted to ask, "Who
are you wearing?" Sometimes that question would just pop out when the
noise from the burgeoning crowds was so loud it was almost impossible to hear
any other question. Most times though, he tried to lob something of substance
about the movie, or the significance of the actors being there. But alas, he
would exclaim, by the time the actors were being pushed and pulled along the
red carpet, the last thing they wanted to do is expound on some existential
angst.

Once the red carpet line was over, Roger would rush inside
to the press room. He squeezed in among
hundreds of other journalists who watched the show on TV monitors suspended
from the ceiling. There, they dashed off their copy trying to make the late
deadline. I think he got an adrenaline rush from the crowds and the chaos and
from writing on deadline about movies he had been discussing all year. So
despite the fact that his role was hard work and probably much less glamorous
than his readers envisioned, it was work he loved to do. "After all," he would say, "who
wouldn't want to go to the prom."

We didn't know it at the time, but there would be no more "proms"
for Roger. I join his fans in lamenting
the loss of his essays about the Oscars.
I loved his exuberance over the 2009 Oscarcast. He thought Hugh Jackman made a great host, and took great pleasure in seeing "Slumdog Millionaire" take home so many awards. It is captured in this article. Last year, he launched his last "Outguess Ebert" contest.
He was so confident when he wrote it that he predicted he would get every
category right for the first time. (He didn't, but he did predict "Argo"
would win Best Picture.) That column drew 159 comments from readers who either
wanted to debate his predictions or praise them. He thrived on lively debate
and encouraged it. (Once he wrote an article about Creationism that drew more
than 3,000 comments. He read each and every one of them.)

The thing I remember most vividly about the contest last
year is that he launched it from his hospital bed. He had fractured his hip and
knew that attending the Oscars was not in the cards for him. So we sat in his hospital room, holding hands
and cheering on all the filmmakers as they were called. He questioned me
closely about the Spirit Awards, which were held in a tent in Santa Monica the
day before. He remarked how much more
closely the nominees for the Spirit Awards and the Oscars had become and how,
in the old days, the independent films often were not nominated for Academy Awards. But it was difficult for him to get
physically comfortable, and he worried that he might not be able to watch the
whole telecast from his wheelchair. He
gave me a perplexed look, as if to say, "What is happening to me?" But we didn't talk about it; we just continued
to watch the show.

This year I will attend the prom with our grandson
Mark-Taylor as my date. Roger would have been so proud that Taylor wants to go
with me. He usually couldn't get the grandchildren (except our granddaughter
Raven) to talk about the Oscars. But in recent years he noticed that they were
becoming more interested in them. Are the Oscar organizers doing more things to
draw a younger audience or are our grandchildren just growing up? Roger always
thought the occasion was so special that the Academy shouldn't pander. He said the high production values would
distinguish it from other shows

On Sunday night, I will sit in the theater thinking of him
as I watch the show. I know my heart
will experience a twinge knowing how much he would have thrilled over some of
the movies in the Best Picture category: "Gravity," "12 Years a Slave," "Nebraska," "Her," "American
Hustle," "The Wolf of Wall Street," "Philomena," "Dallas
Buyers Club" and "Captain Phillips." And toward the end of the
evening, I will wonder if somewhere up there, he is watching, too.

We'll be live-tweeting the Oscars Sunday night as each award is handed out. Follow the show Sunday on our Twitter account, @ebertvoices.

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